This volume, new to The Receptors series, focuses on several areas, including the birth, maturation, and structure of Chemokines; Neutrophil, Dendritic, and Lymphocyte trafficking; and Chemokine Receptors in diseases such as AIDs and lung cancer.

Chemokines are a superfamily of low molecular weight cytokines that were initially described based on their ability to induce the directed migration of leukocytes to sites of inflammation or injury. In humans, there are approximately 45 chemokines that bind to 19 G-protein-coupled receptors. In addition to mediating cellular migration, chemokines have now been shown to affect many cellular functions including survival, adhesion, invasion, proliferation, and to regulate circulating chemokine levels.

This authoritative reference presents the latest research on the role of chemokines, chemokine receptors, and genetic variability in the susceptibility, prevention, and treatment of HIV-1-exploring new therapeutic strategies for improved treatment of HIV-1 infected patients by blocking chemokine receptor expression.

In the past five years, a large number of new chemokines and chemokine receptors have been identified. Alarming progress in the areas of bioinformatics and expressed sequence tag (EST) databases attributed to this development. Recent discoveries provide compelling evidences supporting the roles of these messengers and their receptors in the control of viral infection as well as in aiding virus survival.

In the past five years, a large number of new chemokines and chemokine receptors have been identified. Alarming progress in the areas of bioinformatics and expressed sequence tag (EST) databases attributed to this development.

Receptors on inflammatory cells recognize extracellular signals and pass specific messages to transductional pathways within the cell. Nine receptors of inflammatory cells were selected for this inaugural volume, representing a spectrum of structure-function relationships.